Biden Says 'Chaos' Was Unavoidable following Afghanistan Withdrawal
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – US President Joe Biden on Wednesday said the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan could not have been handled in a way that didn't lead to “chaos ensuing” in his first interview since the Taliban took control of the capital city of Kabul.
“No, I don’t think it could have been handled in a way that — we’re going to go back in hindsight and look — but the idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens. I don't know how that happened,” Biden told ABC News's George Stephanopoulos when asked if he thinks the exit could have been handled better, The Hill reported.
Since the Taliban took control of the capital city of Kabul, Biden has faced intense criticism for the chaos in Afghanistan and questions over the delay in evacuating Americans and Afghan allies.
Stephanopoulos asked if what happened over the past week in Afghanistan was a failure of intelligence, planning, execution, or judgement.
“Look, I don’t think it was a failure,” Biden said, cutting himself off. “Look, it was a simple choice, George.”
“When the Taliban — let me put it another way — when you had the government of Afghanistan, the leader of that government getting in a plane and taking off and going to another country, when you saw the significant collapse of the Afghan troops we had trained, the 300,000 of them, just leaving their equipment and taking off … that’s what happened, that’s simply what happened,” the US president added.
He was also questioned what he thought when he saw the photograph of hundreds of Afghan civilians packed into a US Air Force C-17 and images of several Afghans falling off a plane as it gained altitude taking off from the airport in Kabul.
“That was four days ago, five days ago,” Biden said. “What I thought was we have to gain control of this, we have to move this more quickly, we have to move in a way in which we can take control of that airport and we did.”
The airport was a chaotic scene on Monday as desperate Afghans surrounded and grasped onto US military evacuation flights, which caused the US to temporarily halt flights evacuating Americans and at-risk Afghans.
The US has since sought to surge the number of flights out of the country in an effort to evacuate some 5,000 to 9,000 people per day, but the US Embassy in Afghanistan on Wednesday said it “cannot guarantee safe passage” to the Kabul airport.
